THE MADONNA PICTURE
The master of Elmhurst returned to it the next night loaded down. He
might have passed for a gentleman delivering his own groceries. In the
toy store, with a shuddering recollection of what it was to be void of
material from which to fashion a bribe, he had made purchases right and
left. One would have thought that judiciously doled out they might be
made to spread out over the month of weeping that Mammy Cely had darkly
hinted at.
Philip had not waked when he left home that morning and there had been
no opportunity to see how far a night in his new domicile had succeeded
in reconciling him to it. Mr. De Jarnette had what he himself felt was
an almost unreasonable anxiety about it. Before he came to live with him
the personality of this child seemed a thing of no moment whatever. Now
it assumed gigantic proportions. What if Philip did not like the things
he had bought for him? What if he refused to be bought by them? He
shuddered as he thought of last night and the possibility of its
duplication.
Before leaving home that morning he had informed his housekeeper that he
had shut up the town house for the present and would come out every
night. Moreover, he had directed that Philip should have his dinner with
him. That this was a sacrifice was certainly true, but it was one that
his conscience demanded. Unsuspected in the depths of Richard De
Jarnette's nature was an active volcano, never sending up fire and smoke
that could be seen of men, but keeping up a low rumbling a good deal of
the time. It was this that had brought him to live at his country home
at a time when he specially desired to absent himself from it. It had
issued the fiat that he must forego his quiet evening meal and make
himself a martyr to a child's presence. He thought of it with anything
but pleasure. But, so ominous was the rumbling within that though he
could have avoided it all by a word, for the life of him he could not
say the word. He had forcibly taken this child into his own life. He
could not evade the responsibility that came with the act.
And yet Richard De Jarnette was considered a hard man.
The dinner proved less of an ordeal than he had expected. Indeed, after
the first embarrassment of that strange small presence, it really was
rather interesting. He was so unused to children that his small nephew's
observations seemed rather remarkable. He did not know that the only way
a child learns language is to experiment in its use.
Philip was a well-behaved child, with a natural sense of propriety.
Having been reared with grown people he had a somewhat startling use of
words, but for the same reason he was entirely self-possessed without a
trace of pertness. He had been accustomed to meeting older people on
equal terms. He was secretly rather ashamed of his childishness of the
night before. As he explained to Mammy Cely it had been because he could
not help it.
Seated at the table with freshly brushed locks and all traces of tears
gone, he looked quite the little gentleman. Mammy Cely had cautioned him
not to talk too much. But Philip knew enough to hold up his end of the
conversation.
"Well, Philip, how have you and Mammy Cely got along to-day?"
"Pretty well," said Philip, cheerfully.
"What have you been doing to amuse yourself?"
Philip considered. He had done a great many things, for Mammy Cely had
taken a day off to amuse and entertain him.
"I can't explain it," he said at length. "I forgot the number." What he
meant Richard never knew, and it is quite likely that Philip had no very
definite idea himself.
Later he remembered about putting the chickens in the "hovels," which he
related with animation. After a pause he asked politely:
"Do you have any turkles around here?"
"Turkeys?" suggested his uncle.
"No, sir--turkles--mud-turkles. We had a gweat many in Sous Haven. I had
four--only Vi'let got away and Lily got _squshed_."
"Did you name your turtles?"
"Yes, sir."
"What were their names?" Mr. De Jarnette was surprised at his interest
in carrying on this conversation.
"Rose, and Lily, and Vi'let,--and--Alcohol," said Philip.
Richard gave a sudden cough.
"Isn't that rather a remarkable combination?" he asked, gravely.
"I think Alcohol is a good name for a turkle," said Philip, positively.
"It's such a long name. And turkles are round."
"What did you say happened to Lily?"
"Why, once I took my turkles upstair in a cup so I would have them as
soon as I got up, and--they got out and was promenadin' around, and--in
the morning Mama didn't see 'em and she stepped on Lily and she
_squshed_." Then with a spasm of reminiscence, "Mama don't 'preciate
turkles."
When Richard De Jarnette went into his library that night it was with a
strange feeling of the freshness of life. He had been walking up and
down the garden walks for an hour, holding his nephew by the hand.
Mammy Cely had come for him at last, saying in an aside. "I'm gwineter
git him off while times is good." Then to Philip, "Tell yo' Uncle
Richard good-night, honey."
"Good-night, Uncle Wichard," he said, obediently.
"Good-night, Philip."
The child stood as if waiting.
"He's waiting fur you to kiss him," prompted Mammy Cely. "He ain't used
to goin' off 'thout bein' kissed."
Richard De Jarnette stooped down to the little boy, who put his arms
around his neck as if that were the only way to do.
"Good-night, Philip," he repeated.
"Good-night. Uncle Wichard. Now you have to say, 'God bless my boy.'"
"God bless my boy," said Richard De Jarnette, after a moment's surprised
delay.
"God bless my mama--my Unker Wichard," Philip said, as simply as he said
it every night, and went away quite satisfied.
* * * * *
An hour or two later, when darkness had descended upon the land and the
whippoorwill was sounding his lonely call, Mammy Cely appeared at the
library door.
"Marse Richard, the circus done let in."
"He hasn't begun that performance again!"
"Well," replied Mammy Cely, conservatively, "not to say the reely
pufformance. But the band's chunin' up. And look lak you 's the
ring-master. I ain't got no mo' to say now than one of the spotted
ponies or the clown. He done call fur _you_."
It was inevitable. Mr. De Jarnette laid down his book.
"What is it, Philip?" he asked kindly, as he sat down by the bed.
"Nothing--only--I thes 'emembered it was Lily instead of Vi'let got
away. It was Vi'let that got squshed."
"Oh!"
"He's jes' makin' talk, Marse Richard," explained Mammy Cely in an
undertone. "He can't go to sleep and he wants you to stay with him. I
know chil'n."
There is something irresistible in a child's turning from some one else
to us. It is the subtlest kind of flattery.
"I'll stay with him a while. Go on down-stairs if you want to." He half
wanted to try the experiment of managing him alone.
When she was gone he said quietly, "Philip, would you rather have me
stay with you than Mammy Cely?"
"Yes, sir. You see--I isn't used to--any black person at night."
"I see. If I stay with you will you be a brave little boy and not cry?"
"Yes, sir. My mama told me--I must be bwave, but--" one little hand
covered his lips in a futile attempt to shut off a sob--"I'm afraid
I--can't--be--ver-r-ry bwave!"
Richard De Jarnette held out his arms. Coming up the stairs he had vowed
he would not do this thing. "Do you want to sit in my lap?"
"Yes, sir!"
In his uncle's protecting embrace, the nervous, over-wrought child said
stoutly:
"They isn't any big black dogs 'wound here, is they, Unker Wichard?"
"No, indeed."
"And they isn't anybody trying to get me away from my--from anybody,
_is_ there?"
"There is nothing that is going to hurt you, Philip," was the grave, but
reassuring reply.
Philip lay still a few moments in relieved content. Then he enquired
seductively, "You don't know any stories, do you, Unker Wichard?"
Adding, with a little catch in his voice, "My mama always tells me
stories."
"Stories are not much in my line, Philip. But perhaps I could grind out
one."
"I 'most know I couldn't go to sleep on one," said Philip, with thrifty
providence. "Maybe I could if you could 'member three. I'd try."
"All right."
Philip settled himself for solid comfort. If there was one thing that he
loved better than all the world except his mother, it was a good story.
"This is a story about a dog I saw to-day on Pennsylvania Avenue."
"What was his name?"
"I didn't hear his name."
"Was it Rover?"
"I don't know."
"Do you think it was Carlo?"
"I told you I didn't know his name."
"Well, I never knew any people told stories they didn't know," commented
his auditor.
Thus chastened at the outset, Richard lost that confidence which is the
prime essential to success in the gentle art of story-telling. He
proceeded a little doubtfully.
"This morning, Philip, as I was getting on a car--"
"What car?"
"One on Pennsylvania Avenue."
"Was it a green car or a yellow one?"
"It was a yellow one."
"It wasn't a wed car?"
"No, it was a yellow one."
"Oh! Well--"
"Well, as I got on, a man stepped on the back platform, and his dog
wanted to get on, too. But the man drove him back and then got on,
thinking, I suppose, that the dog had gone home. But instead of that the
dog ran to the front of the car, and when the car started he walked in
and stood in front of his master, as much as to say, 'Well, I did it,
anyway!' Wasn't he a smart dog?"
Philip was silent a moment.
"Didn't he say anything?"
"Who--the man?"
"No--the dog."
"Why, certainly not."
"Didn't he wink?"
"Wink? No."
"What did the man say?"
"He didn't say anything. He opened his paper and went to reading."
Philip waited.
"What's the rest of it?" he asked at length.
"There isn't any more. That's the end of the story." He said it in
rather a shame-faced way.
Philip raised himself to a sitting posture and looked his uncle straight
in the eye.
"Unker Wichard," he said, quietly, "did you think that was a story?"
"I had thought so," acknowledged Mr. De Jarnette. "I see my mistake
now." Then, with a momentary flash of spirit, he enquired, "What's wrong
with that story, any way?"
"It don't begin right. You have to say, 'Once on a time--'"
"Oh, you do? Well, if you know my story better than I do, suppose you
tell it."
"I can't," said Philip. "I'd rather tell you when you get it wrong,"
thus unconsciously enunciating a principle of criticism as old as time.
If all the critics had to pass a novitiate as image-makers before they
were admitted to the bar as image-breakers, there is danger that the
race would become extinct. But this critic was not through.
"And then--Unker Wichard, do you think a dog that don't say anything in
a story 'mounts to much?"
"But, Philip, dogs don't talk, you know."
"Wolfs talk." Philip was reasoning from analogy. "And so do bears. Don't
you 'member the old papa bear saying, 'Who's been sitting in my chair?'
and the little baby bear saying, 'Who's been sitting in my chair?'"
suiting his tone to their respective ages and sizes. "And don't you
'member 'bout _Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit_?"
"But they were not dogs," weakly suggested the story-teller, conscious
that he was begging the question.
"The dogs talk in my mama's stories. And she knows their names, too.
Unker Wichard! _where_ is _ma-a-ma_?"
With the blue eyes filling and that blood-curdling sentence on the
grieved lips, Richard De Jarnette felt the hair of his flesh rising.
"Philip," he said, hastily, "do you want me to tell you 'Little Red
Riding Hood?'"
This was Philip's favorite story, and he swallowed his tears and
prepared to listen.
Mr. De Jarnette was not very sure of his ground, but in a general way he
remembered the story and with fatal fatuity trusted to be able to supply
satisfactory details. Alas for the success of such a scheme! A child's
memory for stories is verbal and circumstantial, and a deviation is a
crime.
"Once on a time," began Mr. De Jarnette--he was sure of this
much--"there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood. I don't know why
she was named that. It was almost as odd a name for a girl as 'Alcohol'
was for a turtle." This was padding. He had perceived that his other
story was too condensed.
"It was 'cause she had a little red cloak with a hood," said Philip.
"That's part of the story."
"Of course. I hadn't thought of that." It came to Mr. De Jarnette
whimsically that he was sharing the fate of all padders. Philip had
instantly picked out the spurious material and thrown it aside.
"Well, this little girl lived with her mother, but she had an old--an
old-d--aunt--"
"It was her grandmother," corrected his audience.
"So it was--her grandmother. Don't hesitate about setting me right any
time, Philip."
"No, sir, I won't. I see you don't know it very well."
"H-m. Well, this little girl went over one day to take her aun--her
grandmother some flowers--"
"Unker Wichard," said Philip in a tone of real distress, "it wasn't
flowers! It was a pot of butter."
"I believe you are right. Well--"
The story went on haltingly, and with many corrections and amendments.
It seemed incredible to Philip that anybody could tell a story so
poorly.
Once when the thrilling part was reached detailing the colloquy between
the little maid and the wicked wolf, Mr. De Jarnette unhappily dropped
into the indirect quotation--a thing that has spoiled many a dramatic
passage in the pulpit.
"--So when the little girl asked the wolf what made his eyes so large he
told her it was so that he could see everything."
Philip had been sorely tried before. But at this mangling of a fine
thing he cried out in utter exasperation,
"Unker Wichard! _That_ isn't the way! Little Wed Widing Hood says,
'Gwandmother, what makes your ey-y-es so big?'" His own matched the
wolf's. "And then the old wolf says, 'To _se-e-e_ the better, my dear!'"
His voice was terrible to hear.
"That's what I said, Philip--in substance."
"Yes, but you didn't say it like you believed it. When my mama tells it
I can just _hear_ the old wolf. _Unker Wichard, where is_--"
"Philip, I haven't finished the story yet."
In his alarm he threw himself into the remainder of the narrative with a
frantic eagerness that was fairly satisfactory. Even with the highly
dramatic close Philip found no fault. But when it stopped he sat with
muscles tense, and eyes eager. He was plainly waiting for something
else.
"Well?" he said.
Mr. De Jarnette was puzzled.
"Well? That's the end."
Philip became limp.
"My mama always jumps at me, and kisses me, and eats me up," he
announced in a dignified manner. He felt distinctly defrauded. "The end
is always the best part of my mama's stories."
What merciless critics children are! How by instinct they see the weak
point and how unerringly they strike for it!
They rocked in silence for a while and then Philip asked in a polite
tone in which there was still a note of hope,
"Do you know Bible stories any better than you do this kind, Unker
Wichard?" He was willing to give his uncle another chance.
But that humiliated gentleman was forced to acknowledge that he knew
even less about Bible stories than the kind he had been relating.
"Then I guess I'll go to sleep," his nephew decided, with unflattering
renunciation.
But sleep was hard to woo to-night.
"I do shut 'em tight and tight and tight. But they fly open." Then after
a further trial, "Unker Wichard, I can't never go to sleep without
kissing mama."
"Philip, suppose you tell me a Bible story," suggested Mr. De Jarnette,
hurriedly. "What do you know?"
Philip reflected. A story of his telling would keep his uncle there just
the same.
"I know 'Moses in the Bulwushes.'"
"That will do nicely. Wait a minute. Let me turn down the light. Now
I'll rock you while you tell it. Go on."
"Well--Once there was a little boy named Moses. And he looked thes like
me."
"Oughtn't you to say, 'Once upon a time'?" suggested his uncle,
maliciously.
"Why, no, sir! Not with Bible stories."
"Oh!"
"You have to say, 'Once there was a little boy named Moses.' And my mama
says he looked thes like me. He was so sweet--and so sweet--and so
sweet! His mama used ter kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him
and kiss him and kiss him and--"
"There! she's kissed him enough now. Go on."
"Well, there was a wicked man in that country and he was going to take
all the little chilwuns from their mamas."
"Where was that country?"
"I don't know, sir. I asked mama where it was and she said she guessed
it was Washington."
"Humph!"
"But I don't believe it was, though, 'cause Gwandma Pennybacker thes
laughed the way she does when mama is fooling. But anyway he was a'
awful bad man, 'cause he wanted to take the chilwuns from their mamas."
He waited a moment for indorsement of this sentiment, and receiving
none, asked, "Ain't that wicked, Unker Wichard?"
"Supposed to be--yes."
"Well--Moses's mother didn't want him to get her little boy, so she hid
him--in the bulwushes. She did! I know she did, 'cause my mama said so.
And-d, she set the basket down in the bulwushes at the edge of the
wiver--Black Wiver--wight where the fwogs and the turkles was. Unker
Wichard, once I was Moses!"
"Indeed? In a former incarnation, I suppose."
"No, sir. It wasn't in a carnation, at all. It was in a basket. And it
was on a wiver."
"Philip, what are you talking about?"
"I _was_ Moses. My mama said I was--her little Moses. We was on a boat,
and there was a wicked man trying to get me, and my mama put me in a
basket, and--"
Richard began to listen with interest. He had never known how that feat
had been accomplished. Smeltzer had not dilated on it much.
"--and she covered me up in the basket--thes like Moses--and that woman
my mama hugged that day said maybe they would think I was soiled
clothes--but I _wasn't_ any soiled clothes! Gwandma Pennybacker said I
wasn't even _clean_ clothes, and I kept thes as still, 'cause mama said
that wicked man would get me if I made a noise."
"What did they do with you?"
"Why, that woman and another man lifted me out of the boat and took me
somewhere--and I stayed there a hundred hours--and then the boat was
gone--and another boat come along (but it wasn't the Gwand Wapids), and
we got on it and my mama thes cried and cried and cried. Wasn't that
funny that she cried when we had got away? But she didn't put me down
with the fwogs and the turkles! She held me tight and tight and tight."
The recollection of that sweet embrace was too much for him.
"Unker Wichard--"
With a child all roads lead to Rome. The story ended as the others
had--"Where's my ma-a-ma?"
When Richard De Jarnette got back to his library he felt as if he had
had a nerve tapped. If this was to continue indefinitely he would became
a driveling imbecile. The plaint had such a haunting, piteous ring!
As he was turning over the papers on the library table his hand
accidentally encountered the picture Bess had given him. He took it up
and looked at it.
It was Margaret at her best. The roundness of curve belonging to young
womanhood was still there, but when he thought of her as a bride it
seemed to him that this face had in it a subtle something that the
bride's face did not have. Maternity had deepened the shadows around the
eyes, and care--inseparable from maternity--had added lines here and
there that would never be retouched. The mouth was firmer than he
remembered his sister-in-law's to have been. He recalled how like a
child's that mouth had been the day he told her Victor was gone.
It was a rare face, in contour and in character. He smiled to think how
faces, like figures, could lie. Yes, a beautiful face, but not one
especially to stir a man. It was pure madonna. A pair of chubby arms
were clasped about her neck, and to her softly rounded cheek was pressed
a baby face--so like her own--and yet to Richard's eyes so like another
baby face that he remembered well. The picture was good of Philip now,
though it must have been taken--well, perhaps--
He turned the picture over to look for a possible date.
"For Grandma Pennybacker,"
it said in Margaret's writing, and then
"Baby Philip--aged two."
Below this was a newspaper clipping pasted neatly on the card. He read
the title curiously: "My Page," and then the lines. It seemed to have
been put there as though the picture and the poem belonged together.
"Long years ago I held within my grasp
An open page--a fair, white, goodly page--
Whereon to write a life. I filled it full,--
With love and love's sweet ministries,--with home
And the dear homely cares which make most full
A woman's life--my husband's sheltering care,
And the soft prattle of a baby's voice.
And then, in very peace and restfulness,
I closed my eyes and said, 'I thank Thee, Lord,
For life!'"
He turned the picture over and looked long at the face. He did not see
Philip's this time. What was this thing? Had she written it herself, or
only found it somewhere and pasted it on the back of the photograph
before giving it away? Perhaps the older woman had put it there. He read
on:
"A moment only--then I heard,
'A happy, sheltered life--but 'tis not thine.'
I reached my hand to grasp my treasured page;
It closed upon a bare, blank sheet--no more.
And still the voice said, 'Write!'"
He looked again at the picture. This sounded as if it might be an echo
from her own life. Was it? Yet he had always thought her so cold.
"Through falling tears
That blurred the page and well-nigh hid the lines,
With fainting heart and faltering hand I took
The pen. It seemed that there was nothing more
To write. I could not fill the page. One bare,
Bald word came to me as I wrote. That word
Was Duty, and I wrote it o'er and o'er.
And then--so tender is our God!--so kind!--
The words grew luminous beneath my pen,
And as I wrote were changed to 'Peace' and 'Joy.'
"'And was it then the same fair page?' Ah, no!
This had a margin, wide and deep and bare,
With many a name erased and line left out;
But 'twas my own--my very own--and all
I had; and clutching it with death-like grip,
I held it to me as I wrote once more."
There came to him the very sound of her voice as she said passionately
to him the day he tried to effect a reconciliation, "All I want now is
to be allowed to live my own life--with my child!"
"A whirlwind came--a tempest fierce and wild,
Broke on my helpless head and bore me down;
It wrenched my page away and beat it in
The ground. And then it passed and left me there,
A broken, prostrate thing. But ere the surge
And roar had ceased there fell upon my ear
The same word, 'Write!'
"'Why, Lord!' I cried, 'how can
I write? My page is gone!--the fragments torn
And soiled and beaten to the earth! _One scrap
Alone I hold of all that once was mine!_'
The voice said tenderly, 'Take that thou hast
And write.' Awe-struck, I listened and obeyed.
"I took the scrap, so pitifully small,
Smoothed out the crumpled edges, and began.
And as I wrote--oh, marvel unforeseen!--
A hand invisible, divine, joined on
Another scrap, and smoothed the seam, and made
It ready for my pen.
"And thus, as days
Go on, the page still grows. 'Tis not the one
I fain would have; 'tis seamed and tempest-stained
And blurred with many tears. 'Tis not the one
I planned; but as I look at it I know
It is the one my Father meant for me,
And so--because He bids me--still I write."
Richard De Jarnette laid the picture down gently and went outside. He
felt bewildered. It was a moonless, starless night. For an hour or more
a glowing spark moved back and forth, back and forth, in the rose garden
his mother had planted.